From
Camps to CampusVietnamese alums reunite, share stories
of their transition from refugee to Calvin student in the 1970sBy Lynn Bolt Rosendale '85

One of the first things that (Wayne) Hung
ex’76 remembers about his arrival at Calvin in 1975 was that his
sponsoring family prayed a lot. “They thanked God for the sunshine;
I thought that was strange. But I soon found out why,” he said with
a laugh.

Marc and Claudia Beversluis
were instrumental in getting Hoang (standing) and Hung to Calvin.

Weather wasn’t the only thing Hung and 12 other classmates needed
to adjust to, though.

“Everything was strange to me,” said Kim Huyen ’79,
“the language, the weather, the school — all of it.”

It was foreign, in fact, to 13 young people transferred from Vietnamese
refugee camps located across the United States to Calvin College, most
leaving all family, friends and possessions behind.

“It was very difficult,” Hung said. “It was a very
uncertain time for us. I was scared to be alone, and my language capability
was a big handicap at that time.”

Having fled his home in April 1975, Hung came via airplane from Saigon
to Guam and later to the United States, where he was transported to Fort
Chaffee, an American military base in Arkansas repurposed as a Vietnamese
refugee camp.

“I didn’t know what my future would be.
I was very nervous and anxious, but fortunately, I realized that education
would be the key to opening doors in America.”— Wayne Hung

Hung spent four months in the camp. “We had a lot of mixed feelings
then,” he said. “People around us had lost relatives, their
homes. I was confused; I didn’t know what my future would be. I
was very nervous and anxious, but fortunately, I realized that education
would be the key to opening doors in America.”

That education started by learning basic English in the camp. One of
his teachers was Claudia DeVries (now Beversluis), a recent Calvin College
graduate, who had volunteered her summer to teach English to the refugees.

“The story of the fall of Vietnam was all over the news,”
said Beversluis, now Calvin’s dean for instruction and provost-elect.
“People all over the country were stepping up to help out, sponsoring
families, whatever they could do.”

So through the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (CRWRC), Beversluis
was assigned to the Arkansas camp. Her future husband, Marc ’75,
was working in resettlement with CRWRC at the time.

Claudia Beversluis (back
left) with Vietnamese students at Calvin in 1975

“It was an overwhelming experience,” she said. “I remember
driving in and seeing the big, white barracks filled with families. Each
family would have a couple of beds, with sheets as curtains hanging down
as their walls. I remember hearing a lot of crying coming from the barracks
at night. They were very disoriented and had no idea where they were going
to go.”

But they were very eager to learn English, she recalled.

Such was the case for Kim Huyen ’79, who arrived at Fort Chaffee
after spending a month on a boat, first to Guam and then on to the United
States.

“I met Claudia and Marc, and we became friends,” she said.
“I remember Claudia asked me, ‘What is your dream?’
I told her, ‘At home I was a first-year medical student, but I see
no way that I can do that here.’”

It was exchanges like this one that got Beversluis thinking about what
could be done. “Colleges all over the country were taking refugees
in,” she said, “so we started thinking, ‘Why not Calvin?’”

William Spoelhof, who was Calvin’s president at the time, recalled
the administration agreeing to admit the students without charging tuition.
“Because of the situation, it seemed like the thing to do at the
time,” he said.

The students were partially supported by the Christian Reformed Church
and federal grants.

“Looking back, I am very grateful to Calvin,” Beversluis
said. “It didn’t seem like a big thing back them. But when
I think about the administration agreeing to take in 13 additional students
in late August with no guarantee of any tuition dollars, what a great
thing it was for Calvin to do.”

So it was that 13 students — 10 from Fort Chaffee and three from
Camp Indiantown Gap, Harrisburg, Pa. — made their way to Calvin.

“I took the admission test, but I failed because I didn’t
know enough English,” Huyen said. “My parents made me go.
They said I was very lucky that I could get selected.”

Hung also struggled with the language, especially after first arriving
at Calvin. “The lectures were very difficult for us,” he said.
“Usually we would tape the lectures and then listen to them back
in our rooms.”

Hearing professors lecturing all evening was a bit trying on the roommates,
however. So trying in fact, that Hung’s roommate, Brent Hoitenga
’79, bought Hung a pair of headphones.

“Hung was so disciplined; he studied all the time,” Hoitenga
recalled. “He was mad when he got Cs and Ds in English. I remember
him saying, ‘That’s no good; I get As at home.’ I knew
he was going to make something of himself; he was very intelligent.”

Calvin accommodated the students by offering a special English as a Second
Language course and a mathematics course that incorporated teaching the
students English mathematical vocabulary.

Professor Ken Piers visits
with Kim Huyen

“I always felt like my teachers paid special attention to me because
I didn’t know English,” Huyen said. “I will never forget
my chemistry professor Ken Piers. I was always behind on exams, and he
would let me sit there all day long. One time I sat there for eight hours
taking an exam. The professors really helped us out. I never flunked at
any class; that is really amazing.”

The students were also aided by other Calvin students, who helped the
students learn conversational English.

“One time I was asked, ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’
and I answered, ‘Yes, I have eight.’ One of my friends quickly
taught me the difference between a male friend and a boyfriend. I never
made that mistake again,” laughed Huyen.

Hung said he learned a great deal from Hoitenga. “I remember I
asked him, ‘How do I know the difference between a girl’s
name and a boy’s name?’ We weren’t familiar with that.”

The Hoitenga family also welcomed Hung to their home for his first Thanksgiving.
“While I was there, they also celebrated his little sister’s
birthday. This was my first experience with a birthday party, so they
all sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to me, even though it wasn’t
my birthday. It was touching.”

Learn more about Calvin's English Study
Program, a four-week summer program international students to
experience American culture and improve their English skills

Adjusting to American culture was one thing; adjusting to the weather
was something else.

“My roommate was from South Dakota,” said Hoang Nguyen ex’78,
who was picked up by an American warship and brought to the United States
in 1975. “He slept with the window open, and I slept far away from
the window. It was so cold. We were really cold, but we had good times.
The most beautiful time of our life is our college time.”

Like the others, (Nguyen) Hoang was sponsored by Calvin alumni. “Bernie
[’66] and Ruth [Apol] Mulder [’66] were wonderful to me,”
he said. “I really appreciate the big heart from everybody at Calvin
— the sponsors, the professors, the students.”

Jim ’51 and Angie Droge Bosscher ex’45 sponsored Hung, and
they continue to be like family. “I still call them mom and dad,”
he said.

“We ‘quasi-adopted’ Hung,” said Jim Bosscher,
engineering professor emeritus. “He is still like one of our own
kids.”

Hung majored in engineering. He transferred to the University of Michigan
after just one year, as he had already studied engineering for three years
in Vietnam and Calvin didn’t offer an engineering major in the 1970s.

“I didn’t even realize how much I was influenced by Calvin
until later,” Hung said. “I grew up Buddhist, but was missing
the people, the Christian community of Calvin many years later.”

After completing his doctoral degree at University of California at
Berkeley, Hung initially returned to Asia to work and help the underprivileged
there. “Many times I searched for a Christian Reformed Church in
Asia,” he said. “It took me a year to find one.”

After 12 years he returned to the United States, first teaching at San
Diego State and now at Texas A&M University, where his research specialty
is nanotechnology.

Like Hung, Hoang majored in engineering and eventually completed his
degree at the University of Michigan.

He now works for Dallas Semiconductor in Texas as an engineering manager.
“I don’t know what I would be now without Calvin,” Hoang
said.

Huyen graduated from Calvin and became a cosmetic chemist. She now works
part time in California as a consultant for companies such as Redken,
Neutrogena, and Johnson and Johnson.

Calvin Vietnamese alumni
met other alumni and friends who were their mentors at a reunion
in Grand Rapids

Others from the group live in Oklahoma and Virginia.

Seven of the original group of 13 and two other former refugee alums,
who entered Calvin a semester later, gathered last July for a 30-year
reunion of their arrival at Calvin. Here they met up with sponsors, Spoelhof
and Calvin President Gaylen Byker to recollect their experience at Calvin.

While on campus, the alums presented Calvin with a donation of $3,000
to purchase library books to support the college’s Asian studies
program.

“I really appreciate Calvin and the sponsors’ help,”
Huyen said. “Calvin taught me how to love and how to give. It’s
really important, and I don’t see many colleges around here that
do that.”

— Lynn Rosendale is the managing
editor of Spark

* * * * *

Calvin English professor Don Hettinga ’76 also volunteered
to teach English to refugees in the summer of 1975. He was assigned to
Fort Indiantown Gap in Harrisburg, Pa. Read "Call
Us Refugees," an article he wrote about his experience.